When I first saw her, she was looking at her cell phone. 40 minutes later, she was still there, and still checking her emails/WeChat or Weibo. She seemed like the saddest girl in the world. She was waiting for someone to come to her. In this luxury mall where rich men come to meet pretty girls, she was all alone.

I asked her to pose for me and she kindly accepted . I am the biggest fan of Beijing’s girls creative sense of style but this time I was first taken aback by how ‘off’ she was. That fugly childish hat, brand new and flat as a biscuit. The hair so perfect coiffed that I sensed it was probably a wig. The Hervé Léger blue dress, so perfectly inappropriate authentic or not, was not meant to be paired with the checkered sneakers and the pale denim shirt.

She was pretty, sure, but in a totally artificial way and the evident effort she put in creating her face made her loneliness all the more poignant. The eyes were hidden behind large blue contact lenses that Asian girls like to look like a Manga.

Perfectly applied eyelashes made her eyes even more strange. Her perfectly created face was lovely but so ‘plastic’ that my heart broke a little when I thought of all the violence she had to get through to look like this. Perfection demands a high price, in blood. She did not speak, she just posed and smiled.

The Chinese beauty aesthetics are a bit different from ours. Pale skin, the paler the better, big eyes, a long narrow face with a pointy chin and a small nose, a big forehead. They start to look like their nasty nickname « snake face »… Yes, a little.

The Luxury business in China is driven by men. They are the ones buying expensive cars, watches, alcohol, designers leather goods and designer gear. They spend like there is no tomorrow because for many there will be none. If the money is truly considerable, their wives and children are often out of China. So the men are lonely. They go to luxury malls looking for ‘Daughters’ they can hire to be their escort.

For some girls, it is a job and that tradition is even older and more common than in France. « Daughters » Concubines… many names for the same transaction. Youth and beauty in exchange for apartment, cars, jewels, designer clothes and no job security.

Sometimes, when I want to photograph a ‘Belle du Jour » she turns around and asks permission to the -usually – older fatter – man that is following her. He often chuckles and agrees, tremendously pleased with himself that the ‘foreigner’ that I am deems his girlfriend pretty enough to be photographed. He paid for the Chanel she is sporting, for the Bvlgari watch, for the designer dress, so she has to ask. He always steps aside to avoid being on the photo. This ‘other’ factor in the Asian luxury market is often ignored but it is quite real.

Good luck Sweetheart. The city is big and the competition quite fierce.